


Undefined but Intimate

by Kara_McKay



Series: Belonging With; Belonging To [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Amateur D/s, BDSM reference, Bottom Brock Rumlow, Developing Relationship, Dominance, Falling In Love, HYDRA Husbands, Hypothetical Female Character, Idiots in Love, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mention of Other People's OCs, Misogyny, Not Beta Read, Prostitution mention, Undefined Relationship, ethical non-monogamy, poor communication skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 20:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16125920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_McKay/pseuds/Kara_McKay
Summary: Jack wants to make his relationship with Brock exclusive.  Jack is being romantic according to Brock's definition of the word, and Brock is being slippery.  This story could probably skate along with the T rating, but the overall relationship is M with a possibility of future E.





	Undefined but Intimate

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, this story has become a series. I realized after posting "Jack Rollins Does Aftercare" that I was going to want to write more about this version of Jack and Brock, and while I'm afraid to commit to a chapter story, I think I can handle a series of interconnected stories that can each be read as complete in itself.
> 
> I mention several original characters belonging to other authors in this work. Isaac Murphy, Cynthia Mercer, Julie Anders, and Westfahl are not mine. I'm particularly fond of Lauralot's Isaac Murphy, and I'm very sorry to say that the rest of these characters have so impressed themselves on my mind as part of STRIKE over the past few years that I just accept their extracanonical presence without remembering where they originated. I guess you could say they've achieved a level of consistency and ubiquity that makes them the next best thing to canon, at least in my mind. 
> 
> In terms of the relationship itself, all I can is that your mileage may vary. Yes, Jack and Brock have discussed and agreed to have a BDSM relationship with emphasis on the S and M in which Jack is the top and Brock is the bottom. They have boundaries, among them being the bedroom door, the basement door, and Brock's apartment door. Both of them periodically ignore those boundaries and then rediscover them when one or the other starts feeling a little vulnerable or uncomfortable. D/s isn't up for discussion, but in spite of identifying as a top, Jack is definitely flirting with dominance. Brock is sometimes submissive and sometimes not, but he never admits to it. Jack tends to worry more about consent, Brock doesn't like to ask, and both of them are manipulative. I don't read their relationship as abusive or ideal, and I guess all I can say is that I'm not writing a relationship manual. If you want to try any combinations of the letters in the acronym BDSM at home, my fiction isn't the place to go to find out how it ought to work. I don't like to tag this story as featuring an unhealthy or toxic relationship because no relationship is perfect and healthy in every respect, from the first meeting, all the time and in every way, but boy howdy, it sure is glaring and incredibly uncomfortable when something slips in a BDSM relationship. I freely acknowledge that fact, and I understand that this story may not be good reading for someone who enjoys reading explicit kink, but maybe isn't on board with a developing relationship between two people who are choosing to figure out something for themselves that they really ought to be researching. 
> 
> I would be happy to hear from anyone who wants to beta read. Among my many other issues, trying to decide between past and present tense is killing me.

Brock is far and away from being the kind of guy who spends his spare time kicked back in front of social media or with many people outside of professional circles, but he’s not stupid or oblivious, and he isn’t privileged to sail into a conservative middle age of either good humored or angry disconnection from the society of people whose views and lifestyles differ from his own. Jack doesn’t have that privilege, either, so he knows what “ethical non-monogamy” means when Brock uses the word. He also knows that Brock’s use of that phrase reflects the same level of practical understanding as “trip to Mars.” He doesn’t know what in hell he’s talking about, but he thinks it sounds like fun. 

Jack knows better. What Brock means when he says “ethical non-monogamy” is that he can’t bear the idea that, somewhere out there, a person who is some combination of attractive and convenient could want to have sex with him, and he’d have to say, “No.” If he’s going to be refusing sex, there’s no good reason in Brock’s mind to be doing the things that tend to lead to getting laid – things that Jack knows are really just parts of Brock’s downtime personality and have nothing, in and of themselves, to do with the unending search for a piece of ass. It’s not about sex, but about how others perceive Brock and how Brock perceives himself. At this point, the reflection of himself that he sees in Jack’s eyes lacks the necessary ubiquity and substance to provide constant stability. It’s getting there, but these things take time. 

While Brocks works it out, Jack knows that none of the words they’ve attached to their relationship mean he can fuck someone who isn’t Brock without consequences. There wouldn’t be big, in-your-face consequences, like angry shouting or cold, misshapen pancakes on his kitchen table on consecutive, lonely mornings. Jack would prefer those sorts of consequences, which he could deal with handily enough. What he can’t deal with is an uncertain version of Brock who spends a little longer in the shower and in front of the mirror, and who watches him, sidelong and poker-faced, while Jack cleans his guns, or reads, or watches TV. Brock’s areas of insecurity are like patches of rotten ice hidden under a dusting of snow on the surface of an otherwise solidly frozen pond, but it’s Brock rather than Jack who plunges into the depths when Jack missteps. It’s worrying. After a while, it’s also exasperating. 

“So, if you were gonna fuck someone on the team, who would it be?” Brock asks, smirking up at Jack from his supine position against the new, white and cerulean blue accent cushions stacked on Jack’s lap. He’s wearing a pair of cream, cotton lounge pants that Jack had bought because he didn’t quite have the balls to buy them in red silk, and a fresh cut splits his left eyebrow above a spectacularly bruised and still slightly swollen eye. Jack knows better than to fuss over it or let his gaze linger on it. Better to give Brock his own, shark-like return grin and make a show of pondering the question while inwardly giving it due consideration. 

Not Anders or Mercer. Both of them had a way of looking at people—a sort of weighing and questioning that didn’t set right with Jack however much he liked them. Anders’s expression has a way of turning sharp and distant, as if a part of her is always assessing exploitable weaknesses or physical vulnerabilities that could give her the edge in the event of some unforeseen betrayal. Mercer is more upfront and, in Jack’s opinion, more abrasive. He trusts her at his back, but he has no doubt that she’s categorized her teammates along social and class lines that might—probably would—come to bear at some future time. Mercer is going places within HYDRA in the same way that Brock is going places. Jack supposed it said something not particularly flattering about him that Mercer’s ambition bothers him in a way that Brock’s never has. 

“You,” Jack says. “You’re the person on the team that I’m fucking. Boss.” He softens the sarcasm with a gentle, fingertip stroke along Brock’s high, defined cheekbone. Brock shifts uncomfortably, his expression briefly tightening. His promotion wasn’t a sore spot, exactly, but an awkward newness to which they hadn’t quite adapted. He reaches for the box of croissants on the table, selecting raspberry crème before looking up at Jack again. 

“Besides me,” Brock presses. 

“I dunno. Blackwell in a pinch, I guess.” Definitely not Blackwell, who was a good enough guy most of the time, but who had the temperament of an obsessive bulldog when something caught his attention, and who had a narrow but nonetheless unsettling sadistic streak.

“Really?” Brock looks skeptical. 

“Naw, not really.”

“Westf- never mind,” Brock says, his words muffled by croissant. A few crumbs have fallen into his neatly trimmed beard, and Jack brushes them off, making a faint hiss as they land on the upholstery. 

“What about Murphy?” Brock asks, unconcerned with flaky crumbs. 

Assuming he could shut Murphy up, that would be a solid, “Yes,” Jack thinks. In Jack’s imagination, a wide-eyed version of Isaac Murphy who would not haltingly suggest that a visit to HR could be averted if Jack walked way would be highly entertaining. He liked the idea of his fist knotted in Murphy’s soft, dark brown, flyaway hair, and the way he imagined Murphy would color up if he bit just above his collar bone. Murphy had that smaller build, too—almost delicate next to some of the other guys. Jack liked it. Jack also thought Brock would be less than overjoyed with this piece of information, which, to his ears, would sound like, “Well, yeah, I’d kinda like to fuck the smart guy who’s almost half your age and nothing like you.” 

“Too young,” Jack said. Also, he really couldn’t think of a better way to fuck up the team dynamic. 

Brock chuckles. His own black hair, thicker and more exactingly styled than Murphy’s, managed to defy gravity in its gelled glory even in his reclined position. He’d never made any comment on the new, blue couch and matching chair that had appeared around the edges of Jack’s green, postage stamp area rug between one long weekend and their next scheduled day off. The new furniture was, Jack thought, a little more fanciful than the old grey couch and chair—less boxy and strictly functional with its vibrant color, rounded corners and cushions and, God help him, accent cushions. Brock’s apartment was a determinedly dark, leather furnished bachelor’s lair that, while stringently neat, always smelled faintly of fried food and beer. Brock could not quite bring himself to surrender it, though, or find the right words to compliment, or at least remark on, Jack’s couch that had replaced the one on which Brock had inadvertently perspired, bled, come, and slobbered. 

“I guess I can see the appeal in the, uh, aesthetic sense,” Brock says, giving Jack a tight, knowing smile. Jack, who’s had all the same training as Brock, can’t even guess at what tells Brock has picked up from his denial. Maybe it’s a shot in the dark. Maybe Brock thinks Murphy has potential in an excitable labradoodle sort of way, too. Jack imagines that great things could come of diverting that intense, consuming enthusiasm for vegetarianism, cats, and activism to more immediately rewarding activities. Alas, he would never know. 

“I’m not going to spend my afternoon telling you how you look,” he says without rancor, making his own assumptions and sidestepping the need to respond to Brock’s observation. 

“Yeah, okay,” Brock replies, letting the thought go too easily for it to have ever actually mattered. Jack, who hadn’t noticed the tension sneaking into his neck and back, feels its release. “But, seriously, have you ever thought about what it would be like with two of us? Y’know,” Brock continues, licking his fingers, “not just getting some guy to blow you in an alley or something.” 

Jack chooses not to address Brock’s suppositions about his sexual habits and frowns into the middle distance. “You mean submissives? A coupla princesses that need their asses beat? Is that what you’re getting at?” He looks back down into Brock’s face, his good eye widening in mock enquiry. 

Brock goes still, but he doesn’t look away. “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that, but, yeah.”

Jack thinks it would likely turn out to be a pain in his ass rather than the other way around, and with plenty of drama to spare. “Is this the part where you start to explain your detailed fantasy about the bad man making you wear lingerie and a cock ring to eat out some blonde chick in a leather bra?” He pauses, frowning thoughtfully. “Does she look like Mercer? Or Carter?”

“What?” Brock blinks. “No! Jackass,” he says, stressing the first syllable. 

Jack snickers helplessly, face reddening with the abrupt incongruity. “Hey, don’t. That’s what my sister calls me.” 

“Huh?” Brock asks. “Oh! JACK-ass,” he says again, and Jack’s shoulders begin to shake. 

“Fuckin’ stop it!”

“You got a real close family, huh, Jack?” Brock’s face splits into a wide, shit-eating grin. “Pet names and everything.” 

Jack did have a close family, actually, pet names notwithstanding, but to Brock, who had no family he’d ever mentioned, Jane was a faint voice in conversations of which he wasn’t a part. It isn’t a troubling thought, exactly, but it mellows Jack’s laughter into a smile. Seeing Jack subside, Brock levers himself upright and continues from where he’d left off. 

“I’m not a submissive,” Brock says. “I’m a bottom.” 

“Okay, yeah,” Jack agrees. Outside of work related and decidedly non-sexual situations, Jack thinks Brock is constitutionally incapable of even simulated submission for any extended stretch of time. He also thinks that quibbling over semantics is more than a little ridiculous. They weren’t hitting the clubs, or setting up a FetLife account, or otherwise making an identity issue of what they liked to do in the bedroom. Or, rather, the basement. 

“And I can have a — I mean, something can turn me on without it being like that.” Brock sounds irritated. He’s made space between them on the couch so he can face Jack squarely, and if he feels his case is being compromised by his state of undress, Jack can’t see it. “I was just sayin,’ is all.”

Jack doesn’t give apologies often or easily, but he thinks Brock might deserve one this time. Brock isn’t stupid or ordinarily inarticulate, but neither of them are good at talking about what they do or what they are to each other. Jack’s found that it’s worryingly easy for domination to turn into condescension, and condescension puts Brock’s hackles up. It would do the same to Jack.

“Sorry,” he says, taking a shot at meaningful dialogue, and damned if this doesn’t feel like a weird-ass communication exercise sprung on them by one of SHIELD’s shrinks. Or HYDRA’s, for that matter. “Sometimes I still feel like you’re telling me what you want me to want. And this,” he paused, looking for the right words. “I don’t think this would be good for us. Extra people don’t just vanish the way the plumber in the porn video does when the 3-way’s over.”

“That was a good one,” Brock says, nodding meditatively. 

Jack’s eyes roll ceilingward. “Your blonde chick would leave hair on the shower walls, and bitch about the toilet seat being up, and fight with you over the last cinnamon roll. You’d argue with her about whose turn it is to be my little spoon.” 

Brock is starting to get that put-upon look that Jack recognizes from work—the one that means he can and will explain how the forms are supposed to be filed one more time, but that the recipient of his instruction will be made to pay for his time if once more isn’t enough. “Sometimes they do leave, y’know,” Brock says. “Sometimes that’s the point. Like that actor said,” he frowns, twirling his index finger, “Charlie Sheen. He said that’s what we pay ‘em for.” 

“Errol Flynn said it first, but either way, that’s kinda shitty, don’t you think?” Jack asks. 

Irritation gone, Brock looks at Jack with the sort of honest, open curiosity that gives him a distressingly angelic look even with the black eye. Jack feels a little nonplussed, not because it’s a view on women he’s never encountered, but because he’s not sure how Brock has gotten where he is in life while holding that view. He settles for a sort of uninflected brevity that, hopefully, reflects no particular judgment, and has the unsettling sense that he’s taking the coward’s way out. 

“All women aren’t whores, and this isn’t the time or place for whores.”

“Guess the time and place is post mission, right?” Brock sneers, and Jack feels a powerful but brief urge to backhand him. “And I never said they are, jeez.” Another scowl. “I’m just saying there’s a simple solution here.”

“To what problem?” Jack asks. 

“What?” Now Brock is the one knocked off balance. 

“What problem does this simple solution solve?” 

Brock doesn’t close his eyes, but he looks at the ceiling rather than at Jack’s face. Jack knows Brock could choose to get angry. The potential is there, and it would be easier than trying to salvage this stupid conversation. Jack waits, silent and impassive. If that’s where Brock decides to go, he’s decided he isn’t going to stand for it. 

“I don’t know,” Brock says gruffly, standing up. “I just— hell, we were joking around about who you’d wanna fuck.” 

“And I told you I wanna fuck you.” Jack said.

“Yeah.” Brock vanishes into the kitchen, his bare feet leaving soft impressions in the rug before crossing the natural oak sea. Ordinarily, Jack would appreciate the dimples low on Brock’s back, peeking out above the waistband of his pants, but right now they seem beside the point. It’s almost nine o’clock of a Wednesday morning, and they’re awake because sleeping until eight feels like sleeping late to them; they have the day ahead of them and no plans, and Jack doesn’t feel like taking Brock back to bed. He can hear the fridge door opening and a cap spinning. Brock’s drinking the last of his orange juice, and in all likelihood, he’ll soon remember something he needs to do at home today. Jack feels a species of dull frustration that he can’t quite name—a sense that things should be easier, or better, or at least more sensible. 

*****************

Brock’s apartment is the antithesis of Jack’s small, neat house with its hidden dungeon, but equally odd in its own way. At a glance, one would say it’s functional and masculine, but really it’s vacant in the way that unoccupied motel rooms are vacant. There’s a dark leather couch and nearly matching chair in a living room with neutral, cream walls and beige carpet. There’s a table and chairs in the blue dinette. There’s a full-sized bed with white sheets and a taupe bedspread in the bedroom; a bureau stands next to a closet with cheap, bi-fold doors. Of course, that’s not all there is: Brock’s apartment includes a white dish set and back pots and pans set, his open laptop perched on a coffee table, some mahogany stained shelves with a few books on them, and a framed poster of a woman wearing a canary yellow bikini and full-face black helmet astride a motorcycle. Brock lacks nothing necessary to living like a civilized human being, and it could be argued that he has a few things that civilized living doesn’t strictly require. Taken as a whole, though, and excepting the poster, which would have been quietly banished during the mid ‘80s, Brock’s apartment feels like a safehouse. Jack’s house is a careful haven that does not include obviously sentimental or nostalgic relics of a life not belonging or beholden to HYDRA, but STRIKE’s new commander’s living quarters are worryingly anonymous. 

A private place, Jack thinks, to which you can go to sleep, or lick your wounds, or have whatever you’ve managed to tear off and run with. A den. He knows he should feel honored that Brock allows him into this space freely, exhibiting no more concern about advance notice than a laconic warning that people who show up unannounced shouldn’t be surprised if things aren’t always to their liking. Instead, Jack feels tension in his neck and shoulders, and a tightness in his chest. No class of people lives indefinitely like Brock Rumlow, as a matter of course—not agents of SHIELD or HYDRA or soldiers or spies, all of whom have lives outside of the job or reasons to simulate them. There are reasons why individuals might choose to live this way, though, and Jack knows that none of those reasons are particularly good. 

Jack doesn’t imagine his place is ever going to feature in Better Homes & Gardens, but it isn’t a den, and he doesn’t want to live in one. He knows that a person with the proper training, or even just a reasonably clear mind and a little empathy, could learn a few things about him by walking through his home, but that knowledge doesn’t keep him up nights. In the scale of small regrets, he wishes that, having spent a decent chunk of his late uncle’s money on a small house, he could also have a garden and a little ornamental landscaping of the sort that requires time and tending. He wishes Jane could visit from time to time, but he supposes its healthier for both of them to look somewhat detached from each other, and he does try to make it home for the holidays. He’s learned to be satisfied with hobbies that can be easily set down and picked back up again, like carpentry and wood carving. Jack has reached the uncomfortable but survivable understanding common to men and women who live long enough to see approaching middle age in his line of work: Despite all the chest thumping and talk of specialized skills and elite prowess, there’s nothing he does professionally that someone else can’t do or be trained to do. That understanding makes having a home and few regrets more rather than less important, even if that means an observer could draw the shocking conclusion from it that he’s patient and has some creative flair, that he doesn’t like clutter, and that he loves his mother. 

He steps out of the elevator on the sixth floor. Whenever he goes to Brock’s apartment, he thinks the process should involve stuttering light in the elevator, a hallway with nicotine yellow walls broken up by a series of identical doors, and a floor runner with a busy but faded and indistinct pattern. It’s a reasonably decent apartment building, though it’s definitely on the cheap side for Brock’s position and income, and certainly generic, but not seedy or scary. Jack will not find mysterious men hurrying past him with their faces turned away, nor will he catch a glimpse of the silent, expressionless Grady girls standing beside a blood-stained wall. There’s a romantic fantasy in these imaginings, but it’s one that Jack isn’t equipped to develop more fully, and that, in its literal form, makes no sense. Brock’s not hiding or preparing to disappear, and assuming it were possible for him to do those things, there’s no reason he’d attempt them by living in a cheap apartment in a bad neighborhood. 

So, romanticism aside, Jack strides along the pale beige hall with its wood-look, wipeable wainscoting, and raps briskly on the third door to his left. Brock is home, Jack knows; he actually had texted first, and gotten back a pithy, “k.” He wasn’t reading too much into that because Brock tended to see his phone as a device for arranging meetings, and not as a proper communication medium outside of necessity. Still, it’s only been three hours since Brock left Jack’s house, Jack has not even a flimsy reason for his visit, and he has no right to exercise that odd, contingent authority Brock has granted him and that he still doesn’t entirely understand in Brock’s apartment. 

“Hey.” Brock says as he opens the door and immediately steps aside. He’s wearing a black pocket T and jeans that ride low on his hips – neither fashionable nor unfashionable, but absolutely on point in Jack’s opinion. There’s no entryway unless Jack wants to count the rough mat over a section of green linoleum directly in front of the door, and a coat rack made up of plain brass hooks mounted on an unevenly stained board on the wall beside it. Jack is never sure whether his sensibilities are more offended by the coat rack’s cheapness or its poor workmanship, but today his gaze bypasses it in favor of skipping from the breadth of Brock’s shoulders to the denim-clad curve of his ass. 

“Should’ve had you here, anyway,” Brock says, waving his hand toward the laptop on the coffee table and dropping onto the couch in front of it. “Scheduling bullshit. Avery’s down – he’ll be out for six fucking weeks, and Henderson and Rodriguez…” he sighs. “I know, I know. I had plenty of notice on them.” 

“So, what are you thinking?” Jack asks. The couch is a little too small and soft; they always end up in the middle of it, and Jack has to re-situate himself so he doesn’t feel like his knees are around his ears. It’s been a while since Brock’s commented on this process, but Jack thinks he detects a faint smirk as he settles close beside him. He glances reflexively at the roster Brock has open, and for a moment, they share an incongruous resemblance to a couple teen girls, nearly cheek to cheek as they look at the screen. “Bradley to Alpha, huh?” Jack observes. Brock nods, and the moment passes. 

“Yeah, and I’m not thrilled with moving anyone up yet, but if I want to try to pull someone in laterally, it’s now or never. Do you know Reynolds in Secret Service?”

“Good guy,” Jack observes. “I don’t know him personally, but I know who he is.” Like most of STRIKE, Reynolds is in his early thirties, and his background is a military patchwork of covert operations that include enough unredacted heroism to make him fit for public consumption in the unlikely and deeply feared event of media exposure. He’s also HYDRA, which removes at least one load of worry from their shoulders. “And I guess he just barely has time to give decent notice if he takes you up on the offer. Immediately. Without due – well, any – consideration.” 

Brock gives Jack a sour look. “Yeah, yeah. I know,” he says. There isn’t much else he can say; there really isn’t any excuse for not having a ready list of candidates to interview, and Jack knows Brock will be feeling pressure from higher up if those interviews don’t start soon. He’s new, and Jack supposes one can expect a blunder or two from the new guy, but Brock absolutely cannot afford a spectacularly avoidable fuckup coming out the gate. 

“Overmeyer, Chen, Tyler, and Hart,” Jack says. Though outwardly calm, he feels a little bit frantic; unsure as to whether he’s doing his new job, too, or a little more that. Or something else, entirely. “Those are the ones I’d rattle off if I had to come up with a list, and Chen and Hart are the ones I’d actually be looking at.”

Brock remains unperturbed. “What I keep running up against is Ballard. You’re right; I’ll end up going with Chen and Hart, but… I kinda want Ballard for Echo. Kinda.” 

“Ballard.” Jack blinks. Ballard’s one of the younger tech guys on support who’s been shoehorned into a couple missions through no choice of his own. He’s impressed himself on Jack as a steady guy, which is a definite plus in a person who’s abruptly needed to step up, but who’s not accustomed to being directly involved in the action. It’s not what Ballard signed up for, but Ballard, too, is HYDRA, so what he did and didn’t sign up for is not necessarily relevant. Jack can see where Brock’s going with this idea, but… no. 

“I think that what we’ve got going on with Delta – why Delta works so damned well – is that it’s a little more spread out, a little more specialized,” Brock’s expression sharpens as he continues, “just a little more, mind you. Not like we’ve got people doing shit that support’s there for, but--”

“They’re not all backing up backup,” Jack concludes. It’s true, but the fact that Brock hasn’t settled decisively on Ballard shows that he sees the problem with this observation. No STRIKE team is made up wholly of muscle with guns and explosives. At the same time, guys like Murphy, who don’t have the same sort of military background as the typical STRIKE candidate but who are also trainable, are the very rare exceptions and not the rule. Outside of the movies, Jack has never encountered any geniuses with eidetic memories and advanced degrees in six disparate fields who’ve also mastered several fighting styles, hold marksmanship records with a variety of firearms, can operate tech ranging from an electric can opener to a nuclear sub, and look good in a tailored suit. Delta has several people who are going to be able to move on from STRIKE without any trouble when the time comes, not people who intentionally diversified with an eye toward STRIKE. “Guess it comes down to where you want to give for what you want to get,” he finally says noncommittally. 

“Yeah.” Brock replies. “And Ballard’s right there on that line between specialized enough to be a really useful tech guy in the field, and so specialized that he’s not useful for anything else. He’s young, though,” Brock continues. “Fit. Doesn’t look like a desk jockey.” 

“You want my honest opinion?” Jack asks, and Brock gives him an annoyed look.

“Yeah,” he answers. “That’s kinda the point of this conversation.” 

“Wait,” Jack says, choosing to address the subject and not Brock’s tone. “You want to shake things up, do something a little different, put your mark on it? Okay, but wait. Fuck this up right now, and you’re done.”

Brock bows his head, his expression turning inward as if re-examining his idea in the light of Jack’s observation. It’s a striking look, and Jack catches himself staring at Brock’s mouth and the stubble along his jaw a little too late to do anything about it when Brock’s eyes turn back to him. 

“You’re right,” Brock says abruptly. “I just—ah, fuck. I think it could be something to think about down the road,” he continues, and tilts his head forward just that little bit more and kisses Jack. 

It’s not a passionate kiss, and Brock is already turning back to the laptop, switching from the roster to his e-mail. Really, it had just been a brush of lips. Not quick, exactly, but absentminded—something that had happened for no better reason that that they were sitting so close to each other, and Jack’s face had been right there. Natural.

“You’ve got a mouth like a woman, Jackie,” Brock says matter-of-factly, his brow furrowed as he taps rapid fire at his keyboard. “It’s the only thing about you that’s soft. Takes me by surprise.” He sends the e-mail, and claps his hands just above his knees, “But, getting back to what you were saying—

“Wait,” Jack blurts. Brock gives him an inquisitive look—it’s the one that comes out in meetings when he wants someone to know he’s interested and paying close attention, and Jack swallows a laugh. Nervousness is not a part of his makeup, but his lips feel lightly scalded in a pleasant way, and he does not want to talk about Ballard, who will never be on a STRIKE team. “I actually came here because I wanted to make sure we were okay… clear… on what happened earlier,” Jack continues. 

“Well, we’re all over the map today, aren’t we,” Brock observes levelly, but without mockery. He’s better prepared to handle personal conversation now that he’s being professional, which both amuses Jack and makes him uncomfortable. He had not dropped by to talk about his feelings with Commander Rumlow, but he has to admit that Commander Rumlow has his shit together, more or less, while Brock most certainly does not. 

“I’m not mad,” Brock says, putting it right out there. “Just needed a little space. You get that, right? You’re not going to…” his mouth twists as he tries to find the right words to convey concepts of clinging and fretting without having to actually say, “cling and fret.” 

Jack has never clung or fretted in his life, or at least not in relation to someone he’s been fucking, among other things. “No.” Simple and to the point. “No, I’m not. But that’s not what I meant. I mean, I didn’t think you were angry.” And now they are back to square one, but this time it’s Jack stumbling around as if he were trying to talk to his date at the junior high dance. The thought annoys him, and his (womanly) lips compress. He pauses, thinks for a brief moment, takes a breath, and then delivers his report. “You wanted to joke about who I’d want to see other than you, and maybe talk about involving someone on a casual level. I get that you weren’t being all that serious about it. What I want to say, though, in all seriousness, is that I am not involved and do not intend to be involved with anyone other than you unless or until you decide you don’t want to be involved with me. In that way.” 

“Huh,” Brock says, nodding slowly. “In that way.” 

Jack doesn’t bristle or shrink under that musing reiteration. This isn’t Brock being an ass, but Brock processing, buying a little time, and maybe applying a little pressure while he’s at it, but not with any real force or intention. It’s just something he does because he’s used to doing it. Like kissing Jack, apparently, though Brock’s been leaning on people to see how they’ll handle it for a helluva lot longer than he’s been abstractedly making out with his SIC while discussing personnel changes. 

“Yeah, asshole, in that way,” Jack says. Brock smiles brilliantly. 

“I love it when you get romantic, Jackie, and I wish we could head back to your place, but we only got one day and,” he pauses for a second, then barks out an uncharacteristically self-deprecatory laugh. “It’s hard to bounce back and forth from one headspace to the other sometimes.” 

“I can see that,” Jack replies. He certainly could. He has the same problem. Sometimes. “We could have dinner and watch a movie like normal fucking people, y’know.” He waves his hand in a room encompassing gesture and smiles as if he’s had a sudden flash of insight. “Hell, we could do it right here!”

“Yeah, we could,” Brock says. He stands, glancing at Jack with a mixture of affectionate amusement and uncertainty. “But we’re not. You’re gonna go home, and I’m going to get some other shit done that I’ve been putting off—you’re bad for me that way, Jackie,” he interrupts himself, quirking dark brows, “and I gotta figure out what to do about that. Then we’ll have dinner and a movie at your place. Order in?” 

And just like that, Jack has been handled. He knows it, too, but here he is, standing and nodding, smiling stupidly while he looks down into Brock’s handsome, up-tilted face with its split eyebrow and black eye. Brock is going to maneuver him back across the room, past the beat to hell leather chair that Jack suspects no one ever uses, past the dust free end table with its ironic, pristine copy of The Art of War, and back over the immaculate, green square of linoleum doorway. 

“Sounds good,” Jack says, and the future unfolds along its inevitable course. He initiates the kiss at the doorway, and it’s good—he doesn’t have to half-ass pick Brock up to kiss him, and he doesn’t feel he needs to be excessively gentle, or that Brock will be dissatisfied or insulted if he chooses to be gentle. Brock is somehow both heavy and pliable—immovable by the wrong hands working at the wrong angles but responding easily to Jack’s touch. His eyes are closed, and he holds onto Jack lightly; he smells like body wash and laundry detergent, and he still tastes faintly of toothpaste. Jack holds on because he likes that feeling of not quite passive weight—of physically supporting someone who doesn’t actually need support. 

Eventually, he has to let go. “Around six?”

“Maybe a little earlier,” Brock says. His tongue darts out to tap at his lips, and Jack’s heart turns over. He fumbles with the locks, his eyes still on Brock as he turns the door knob. Brock grins and shakes his head, pushing him into the hallway. “Seeya in a few hours,” he says, and the door closes. Jack stands there, still smiling, and realizes with something that is not entirely unlike horror that he is in love. 

Then he also realizes that Brock never clarified his own position on their status. Jack’s smile fades. He blinks a few times, and then turns abruptly away, suddenly conscious of the fish-eye lens in the door. His shoulders don’t hunch, and his purposeful stride is unchanged, but he feels that same, self-directed irritation he’d felt earlier when he’d been fumbling for words on Brock’s couch. Nothing’s really wrong, Jack thinks: nothing he can’t set to rights next time they have a couple consecutive days off. What irritates him is that he shouldn’t have to be thinking about how he’s going to define their relationship when the opportunity next arises because he should have done it already. Not over coffee and croissants while Brock teased about their teammates, and certainly not in Brock’s jealously guarded and indefinably odd bachelor’s lair. This is not a subject on which he should have ever been indulgent. 

“Yeah, but I didn’t know,” Jack says conversationally to the empty elevator as the doors close, and that feels right enough for him to be okay with it. He hadn’t known, and even with the aid of hindsight, he can’t imagine how he could have seen this coming; beating himself up over failing to plan for falling in love would be nothing but pure arrogance. He knows now, and there’s still plenty to work with. 

There’s enough time to cook a real meal if he heads directly to the store. Jack, good mood restored, mentally plans his list as he heads for his car.


End file.
